Is Susan Combs Running?

Is it possible that Susan Combs, having already announced that she will retire from public life after serving out her term as comptroller, is still trying to find a niche for herself in the 2014 primaries?

Here’s an article she sent to her mailing list, which was forwarded to me by a Republican consultant:

If knowledge is power, the relationship between our federal government and its citizens grows ever more lopsided. The government has our phone data, our tax returns, and even knows our Internet history…yet we still haven’t the foggiest notion what happened at the IRS, DOJ, EPA, or at the American consulate in Benghazi.

It’s not just one rogue branch of the federal government. Government agencies, more and more, seem to think that you don’t have a right to know what they’re doing with your tax dollars, or how they are regulating your freedoms.

We’ve made so much progress on transparency in Texas when it comes to our state’s financial situation. But we need to bring that transparency to every branch of government across the country.

Check out the op-ed I wrote last week on this topic, and forward it to your friends. Now is the moment for us as a nation to stand up and demand transparency from our elected officials.

This sure doesn’t read like a departing message from a disgraced public official. It reads like something written by a candidate for future office. Is this an indication that there is an announcement of candidacy in Combs’ future? I can’t think of any reason why the comptroller of Texas would feel compelled to write about Benghazi when she ought to be reading the resumes of people who might be capable of doing an accurate revenue estimate.

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Comments

WUSRPH

She has to be rational enough to know that it is all over; but she clearly wants to go out sounding like an active, effective officeholder. As to reading resumes, most folks who might be interested would be reluctant to join her staff for fear that the next comptroller is going to clean house. They will probably wait to send their resumes to the winner of the GOP Primary, rather than take a chance that the job could wind up being short term. Also I think you may be doing an injustice to the Comptroller’s estimators. A lot can happen to a revenue estimate after it has been sent down to the front office, espcially if that office is as sensitive to the governor’s wishes as Combs appears to have been. She saw what happened to Carol of the many names when she tried to exercise some independent judgment and clearly did not wish to suffer the same fate.

AlmostNormalTexan

Ever since Strayhorn, Texas has been left with the very bad precedent that the comptroller’s office should be a politicized originator of policy ideas, when it really just needs to be a state-level version of the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury Department rolled into one. The comptroller’s job is to keep an eye on the money pot and use good economic and statistical analysis to gauge how much more or less is going to be coming in. I don’t expect a lawyer to be able to do that, but I expect a lawyer to be able to hire people who can. What the money gets spent on is outside the purview of the office, as are social issues like abortion, as are federal issues like Benghazi. Susan Combs hasn’t been a very good bean counter; if she didn’t want to count beans, she should have stayed in the Legislature.

WUSRPH

The polticalization of policy goes back to before Carol of the many names, but it has clearly gotten worse over the years. Everyone knew Bullock had political objectives but he somehow kept most of them out of his official duties. We can only hope that future Comptroller’s follow that example. But I fear otherwise.

Combs does have 4 consecutive statewide election victories in her belt as TX Agriculture Commissioner and Comptroller of Public Accounts. I do agree with you that she has ZERO chance of winning higher statewide office unless she wants to jump into the gubernatorial race and get spanked by Abbott.

Unwound

God I hope she runs, just for the entertainment factor of seeing her publicly humiliated for her terrible performance in office.

Another Wilco Voter

As much as I’d like to agree with you that she’d be humiliated if she ran again, I don’t believe that would happen. Republican candidates don’t get humiliated in Texas no matter what they do (see Perry, Rick, Governor and Dewhurst, David, Lt Governor).

Pat

Somebody told me once that her family owns a huge chunk of Brewster County? She would be a top-tier candidate to challenge Gallego.

AlmostNormalTexan

They do, but Quico Canseco is running again anyway and he’s a better candidate.

ghostofann

It’s pretty obvious. She’s throwing her hat into the ring for governor.

Ghostofann, Abbott will EAT HER ALIVE for breakfast and spit her out. Second, Perry will endorse Abbott to continue the Perry Regime.
Either way, it’s gonna be 4 more years of Perry with Abbott at the helm and the governor’s office will go back to being WEAK.

ghostofann

All of this is true, but none of it will stop her from running anyway.

But at some point, someone in Combs’ family will tell her NOT to dare run for the governorship. She’s already damaged goods at this point with the scandals surrounding her office after 8 years and her poor budget shortfall predictions haven’t helped either.
Gromer Jeffers of the Dallas Morning News in WFAA’s tv show, Inside Texas Politics, said Dewhurst should run for the governorship.

Just a few stories some of you might remember: the personal information of current and former state employees being released on a public website, at least 3.5 million people were affected. The state offered free credit checks for a short time and then swept the story under the rug. The under estimates of state income which may have made the 5.4 billion in education cuts unnecessary and the questionable Amazon deal are just a few that come to mind.

SpacelySprockets

I signed up for some kind of credit-monitoring they offered to those affected, and never heard a thing after that. Beyond shabby.

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